Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

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calima
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by calima »

Nintendo also uses per-file cumulative patches. So if your game has just a few big files, a change to one file means the entire file is in the patch.
Pokun
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Pokun »

Does this mean it takes up the space of both the patched file and the original file? I'm talking about cases where the patch is in a separate title from the game and may even possibly be deleted to downgrade the game.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by rainwarrior »

Sumez wrote:Sony's patching system is still incredibly dumb. You pretty much need to re-download every single asset of a game to patch some minor changes in the code. Back in the previous generation, PS3 updates of several gigs would be a few megabytes in their X360 counterparts.
That's not due to Sony, that's on whatever devs prepared those patches. You absolutely could make small concise patches on the PS3 (I have firsthand experience of this), and you can on PS4 too. If there were equivalent patches on 360 and PS3 that were significantly different in size like that, it's because someone implemented the patch badly on the PS3.*

...but I fully agree that patches and game downloads in general are HUGE now, and I think it's hella stupid. Super wasteful.

Edit: * After looking up some stuff, I had forgotten that MS also had a maximum patch size policy for 360 (because of it's tiny min-spec for storage) and Sony didn't for PS3, so maybe a case of having to solve the size problem for one platform and not putting in the effort on the other where it wasn't strictly required. You still can make compact patches on the PS3 though, and many devs did make an effort to do this.

Sumez wrote:I really wish I could share rainwarrior's enthusiasm.
TBH I'm more enthusiastic about PC gaming these days than consoles, and I really despise the whole locked system thing, but I own consoles anyway because I want to play their games.

I'm mostly just trying to point out that at least the patching problem that OP complained about can be bypassed (for offline games, at least), and even when not bypassed it's usually more convenient now than before.
Last edited by rainwarrior on Wed Dec 13, 2017 2:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
calima
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by calima »

Pokun wrote:Does this mean it takes up the space of both the patched file and the original file? I'm talking about cases where the patch is in a separate title from the game and may even possibly be deleted to downgrade the game.
The patch takes the size of the new file. If the file was huge, so is the patch.
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Sumez
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Sumez »

rainwarrior wrote: That's not due to Sony, that's on whatever devs prepared those patches. You absolutely could make small concise patches on the PS3 (I have firsthand experience of this), and you can on PS4 too. If there were equivalent patches on 360 and PS3 that were significantly different in size like that, it's because someone implemented the patch badly on the PS3.*
I'll trust you as I don't have any first-hand experience myself, but at the very least it must have been much easier to make smaller, effective patches on the 360, considering how consistent this difference is with pretty much every single update I've had to endure on either system. I have never seen a small game patch on neither PS3 nor PS4, so I'm curious where you've seen them.

My "source" though is someone I know who's been working in the industry, who himself was claiming about how retarded he thought Sony's patching system was. I'm sure he has had some reason to claim that.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by rainwarrior »

Sumez wrote:
rainwarrior wrote: That's not due to Sony, that's on whatever devs prepared those patches. You absolutely could make small concise patches on the PS3 (I have firsthand experience of this), and you can on PS4 too. If there were equivalent patches on 360 and PS3 that were significantly different in size like that, it's because someone implemented the patch badly on the PS3.*
I'll trust you as I don't have any first-hand experience myself, but at the very least it must have been much easier to make smaller, effective patches on the 360, considering how consistent this difference is with pretty much every single update I've had to endure on either system. I have never seen a small game patch on neither PS3 nor PS4, so I'm curious where you've seen them.

My "source" though is someone I know who's been working in the industry, who himself was claiming about how retarded he thought Sony's patching system was. I'm sure he has had some reason to claim that.
Well, I've seen PS3 patches <1MB and I've seen ones >1GB. I can't remember specific examples, and I can't say that I've done any surveys of how big equivalent patches were on different systems, but I did work on file systems stuff for both PS3 and 360 and tested patching, and neither of them seemed like a stupid system to me at the time.

The 360 launched with a 20GB hard drive version, and later an even smaller 4GB version. The smallest PS3 hard drive was 60GB. Microsoft put some rather severe restrictions on how big a patch could be. I forget the details of the size, and recall that they used some weird "xbox unit" of measurement, but it was really small. This did mean that developers had to find some way to make the patch more compact for 360. Not only that but they were encouraged to keep file sizes smaller in general just because a lot of users wouldn't have the space to spare.

DLC was a whole separate thing on the 360, and not subject to that size restriction, but with unrestricted update size on the PS3, something that happened a lot was that some developers stuck "DLC" content into a PS3 update patch rather than in a separate DLC download where it belonged... sort of like the "on disc DLC" thing but "in patch DLC" instead. Maybe more convenient for them to roll it out that way, but the developers were stealing this convenience from their customers' bandwidth. :( This is not caused by the PS3 system itself, just by developers taking advantage of a less regulated environment. Many developers did properly separate DLC content downloads from update patches, but I did see a lot of cases where it was not-- on the 360 MS was watching over this matter.

The 360's optical media was also DVD, rather than the PS3's blu-ray. For disc based games at least this meant that sometimes it was sensible to just ship bigger/uncompressed data on the PS3. The other thing I recall about this is that the 360 file system layer had some convenient built in compression library, and the PS3 did not. So if you had developed for the 360 first and were relying on it, porting to the PS3 could leave you with the task of implementing your own compression system to compensate... or possibly just leaving things uncompressed.

So... that's basically it, in my view. I didn't play nearly as much stuff on 360 so I don't have a good basis for comparison, but I can believe that you routinely saw smaller patch sizes on it for the reasons above, none of which are really anything to do with the patching system itself, just MS was more strict about what went where and how much. I think the most egregious differences are probably just the conflating of DLC with update patches on the part of PS3 developers.
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by tepples »

One excuse for in-patch DLC is to allow online multiplayer between players who have bought the DLC and players who have not. This is the case, for example, with Super Smash Bros. For.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by rainwarrior »

There's a lot of factors that could make it more convenient, even in a single player game. I can see why developers would choose to do it, but it does require the point of view that bandwidth is "cheap". (Or more cynically: offloading it to customers' bandwidth is "spending someone else's money".)

Looking it up, I remembered that the 360 patch size restrictions were basically built around the 64MB memory unit accessory. They wanted it to be possible to put patches on this device. I don't know what the rules are for XB1, but I kinda doubt they have patch size restrictions any more, since the reason for this on 360 was pretty specific and entirely obsolete.
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Celius »

Erockbrox wrote:It seems like modern gaming is way more complicated than it needs to be. It should just be, put in the game and F-ing play it.
I couldn't agree more. I get so annoyed every time I turn on a modern console. I went over to my brother's house the other day, and he asked me to load up a game on his XBox while he grabbed something from the other room. I thought I would be able to figure it out on my own, but I honestly was like "I don't even know WTF I'm looking at." I ended up having to create some profile and do all this bullshit, and by the time we got it all up and running, I was so annoyed that I didn't find anything about the experience enjoyable.

Besides creating profiles and downloading content and all that shit, I'm totally not interested in modern games. I'm like dead inside anytime I see Gears of War types of games. The color schemes make me feel depressed. The characters make me feel depressed. I feel like there is so much to look and and so much going on that it just sucks the life out of me. Oh, and then you need to spend all this time learning how to actually play the f-ing game through some in-game tutorial. I just don't care enough/at all.
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Pokun »

Usually you only need to create a profile the first time you start the system or if you want to add new users though.

But yeah I really don't like lengthy tutorials in games. Especially not the really boring ones or if you only want to try the game out for a quickie.
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tokumaru
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by tokumaru »

I'm with Celius all the way. Current game consoles and most games don't appeal to me at all.
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Bregalad
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Bregalad »

To be honest I know squat about modern games (the more recent ones I have are from arround 2007-2008), but from what I see they seem to be all about violence and boobs. Not that those didn't exist in old games, but they were somewhat less prominent.
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tokumaru
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by tokumaru »

Bregalad wrote:To be honest I know squat about modern games
I know very little too, mostly from seeing my brother playing on his PC when I go visit. One thing I absolutely despise about modern games are the attempts to create realistic graphics... "realistic" graphics, in addition to being boring, always look fake and weird. Another thing I can't stand is when games have a lot of movies, cutscenes, or other kinds of non-interactive sections. Tutorial levels that try to teach you a billion commands and give you tons of instructions before you can get to the actual game are also incredibly annoying.
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Bregalad
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Bregalad »

I know very little too, mostly from seeing my brother playing on his PC when I go visit.
Oh I see. In my family I am the younger bro, so I'm definitely not going to learn anything about newer games by visiting my eldest bro ^^. Also my younger cousins had a Wii I think but they stopped to interest for games past this point so they're probably not much more up to date than I am.
tokumaru wrote:Another thing I can't stand is when games have a lot of movies, cutscenes, or other kinds of non-interactive sections.
This is hardly new, games had that in the early 90s. Myst for instance. As with everything I think it can make game great if used great, and terrible if used poorly.
Tutorial levels that try to teach you a billion commands and give you tons of instructions before you can get to the actual game are also incredibly annoying.
This is hardly new, annoying tutorials have been there in the late 90s. Again, some games have great tutos too, so this is always a possibility. The presence of a tuto is not what makes a game good or bad. I agree it's hard to have a tuto without it getting in the way of gameplay, but if it contians humour then it's ok I think.
One thing I absolutely despise about modern games are the attempts to create realistic graphics... "realistic" graphics, in addition to being boring, always look fake and weird.
Well the trend to have graphics more and more realistic is inevitable, but I'm pretty sure on side of that there has always been games with cartoonish look, or has it disapeared ?
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Re: Consoles that require the internet vs ones that don't

Post by Erockbrox »

Tutorial levels that try to teach you a billion commands and give you tons of instructions before you can get to the actual game are also incredibly annoying.
Sometimes the best tutorials are the ones which don't feel like tutorials. For example SMB NES level 1-1, this level is a tutorial level, however it never really feels like one.

I've played other games where they literally sit you down for 10 minutes and painstakingly talk you through a tutorial. Some of these tutorials are boring and frustrating because I just want to play the game, not have to wait for this thing to end.
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